Etched my first board tonight in a long time - for various reasons (toner's getting low, it's an odd shape) I touched up a few spots with nail polish and then decided to sit the whole thing on top of (NOT IN) the toaster and just set it off a few times to make sure the nail polish had really dried out (in a previous attempt it hadn't and partially lifted during the etch.)
Now, I may have inadvertently done the "toner cure" because I can't get anything off the board now no matter how much nail polish remover I throw at it. But there's another quite likely explanation which is that one of the junior chemists around the house has, either to conceal some excessive use or just for the hell of it, diluted the stuff heavily - it does seem to smell a lot less strong and evaporate less.
But if it ∗is∗ toner cure, I've got a pretty repeatable means of doing it!
PG
On 22/03/2011, at 10:49 AM, Mike Bushroe wrote:
> Getting toner to transfer on to a board depends on three things:
>
> time
> temperature
> pressure
>
> The final result is mostly a product of the three. You can reduce one (to an
> extent) by increasing one or both of the others. Temperature is the
> non-linear one. Too low and the toner never gets soft enough to stick, no
> matter how much time and pressure. Too high, and the toner turns to liquid,
> and squishes out and destroys all the fine details.
>
> If you are having trouble running very thin boards through your
> laminator, try putting a second thin board under it to bring the thickness,
> and thus the pressure back up. This only works, of course, if you are
> transferring one side at a time. But if you are doing a double sided board
> at once, add thick paper above and below the board with transfer paper so
> that the total thickness will be better,